January 04, 2008
This Blog has moved!
This is the last entry I am making on this blog page. The blog is now moving to http://www.rickbeyer.blogspot.com New entries can be found there, as well as at at a page on my website, http://rickbeyer.net/stories1/blog.html
I'm making the move to take advantage of better functionality and ease of entry at that site.
Old entries will stay archived at this page: http://www.rickbeyer.net/Astonish
Posted by rickbeyer at 02:49 PM | Comments (0)
Gotta Love it!
A nice hit in today's Boston Herald.
Posted by rickbeyer at 01:04 PM | Comments (0)
January 03, 2008
New Hampshire Primary Redux
The non-stop coverage of the election that won’t end will soon turn its focus from Iowa to New Hampshire. The thought makes me nostalgic for those halcyon days when I too was a newsman covering the presidential candidates in their glorious quest for the best home-office in America.
The year was 1988, and I was a producer for a Boston TV station. The wise elders there generally kept me inside the newsroom, chained to a desk, where I could provide brilliant direction for those poor souls out in the field. My job was to offer reporters guidance in their never ending search for Truth, or if Truth was in short supply, at least something to fill a minute and a half on the 11 o'clock News.
But as the 1988 primary season began, the powers that be deemed it important for me to expand my horizons. So I was sent up into the great rolling stretch of suburbia that constitutes southern New Hampshire to help cover the first in the nation New Hampshire Primary. Here was my chance to put all my years of education and accumulated political acumen to work.
My first assignment was to field produce a live interview with Bob Dole. I poured him a glass of water, fixed his tie, and reminded him what state he was in. A real test of my skills!
On my second day I interviewed Mike Dukakis. He told me he was not a technocrat. For some reason my bosses weren't interested in this piece of exclusive news. So instead we showed a picture of Mike Dukakis whistling. I didn't know what he was whistling, which suggested to me the need to beef up my investigative reporting skills.
On Day three I was assigned to cover Vice-President Bush on his whistle-stop bus tour through Southern new Hampshire. Up until then I wasn't even aware that busses had whistles. The first event was at a truck stop where I was able to observe the vaunted national media in action. They all crowded into the gift stories like a gang of drunken Hells Angels, and bought hats with four letter words on them. Hats that said: “S___ happens.” The vice president thought the hats were funny, and couldn't stop giggling at them. That of course was not news. Then he climbed into an 18 wheeler and drove it around the parking lot, with Secret Service men hanging off the side. That of course was news. I complimented myself that I could tell the difference.
After three days of generating this hard-hitting political coverage, the station suddenly decided to send me back to Boston. I was too valuable inside, they said, to waste my considerable talents outside. What a shame. I was just getting the hang of it.
Now I watch from the sidelines. Never again will I adjust Bob Dole's tie, or chase the Vice President around a truck-stop. But I remain proud of my unique contributions to the American political dialogue.
Posted by rickbeyer at 06:54 AM | Comments (0)
January 01, 2008
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
We went to see the movie National Treasure: Book of Secrets last night. The critics have generally panned this film (“Can you imagine how dreadful the National Treasure movies would be if Nicolas Cage weren’t in them” sniffs the Boston Globe’s Ty Burr) but I must confess that I fell for the first one and I like this one even more. How could I fail to love two films that make history and historians central elements of a good-time global romp!
This sequel intersects my own life in so many places I began to think it had been made just for me. There was a painful book signing—a unique form of self-torture I have engaged in numerous times. There’s a sequence shot at Mount Vernon—a place where I just recently shot a short film, which will shown there as part of a new exhibit starting on President’s day. An important scene takes place during the White House Easter Egg Hunt—I just finished a piece for The History Channel on said event. It is followed by a scene in the Oval Office—I’ve been there. (Okay, I’ve stood in the doorway and looked in, but that is still pretty damn cool.)
There is also an extended sequence inside the Library of Congress, a place with which I am very familiar, having visited numerous times for research purposes. I found a terrific article about the shooting of the film, in which I learned that they used a helium balloon to lift a lighting set-up to the top of the 160 foot dome in the reading room to light it during the all-night shooting there.
The move is, of course, preposterous in countless ways. But it also is chock full of real, little known history stories, such as the tale of the Resolute Desks, which play a major role in the plot. Critics may moan and groan, but I think it is fantastic that one of the most popular movies of the Christmas season puts history and historians on a pedestal. Hoorah!
Posted by rickbeyer at 02:34 PM | Comments (0)